Sunday, March 18, 2001
The Tigers advanced to the Class AAAA western final against Schenley.
By BILL ALBRIGHT
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
PITTSBURGH -- For the first three quarters of Saturday's PIAA Class AAAA quarterfinal against Uniontown, the George Junior Republic High boys basketball team never held the lead.
However, after hanging around and staying close, the Tigers captured their first lead on their first possession of the fourth quarter on a lay-up by Tyrique Glasgow.
From there, it was an old-fashioned dogfight until the Tigers walked off the floor with a 71-70 victory.
Next up: With the win, the Tigers (25-3) will meet Schenley, which eliminated Pittsburgh Central Catholic 66-58, Wednesday night for the western crown and a trip to Hershey for the PIAA state title game.
Uniontown lost to George Junior 59-49 to open the season and fell to 25-6.
As for his club making things interesting, George Junior coach Bob McConnell admitted the Tigers had been doing just that all season.
However, this time McConnell felt the Red Raiders had a lot to do with things that took place, especially in the early going, when George Junior was guilty of many turnovers and missed shots from in close.
"Tonight I don't think it was as much us making it interesting as Uniontown making it interesting," McConnell said.
"They played real hard and they also had a good game plan. They got up on us early, spread it out and tried to make us come out on the perimeter. They are obviously much quicker than we are and in stretches, that hurt us in the first half. They got a lot of easy, uncontested baskets."
Another factor that hampered the efforts of the Tigers was the fact that second-leading scorer, Roger Randolph, spent most of the second and third periods sitting alongside McConnell with three personal fouls.
"If anyone would have told me that we could have stayed close for three quarters with him on the bench, I would have said you were crazy," McConnell said of Randolph.
"That made it tougher for us to do some things and we had to fight through that situation."
Comeback start: Trailing by a dozen (28-16) in the second quarter, the Tigers went on an 11-4 run to cut the deficit to just five at halftime, 32-27. "We changed our trap around a little bit and [Matt] Anderer came in and gave us a spark," McConnell said. "We told the kids that we were going to have to take care of it one basket at a time.
"We were able to keep dwindling it down until we finally caught them. They shot the ball unbelievable for most of the game. I didn't think [Dierre] Jenkins could shoot the ball that well, but he made a believer out of me."
Jenkins finished with 20 points.
"He hit those two 3's out of the corner right away and that gave them a big boost mentally when they jumped on us," McConnell said.
With the game tight down the stretch, it was Glasgow and Bradley Warner who did most of the damage to help build the George Junior lead to as many as five points, three times.
Glasgow finished with 13 points, all in the second half, while Warner led all scorers with 22 points, 15 in the final eight minutes.
"Tyrique stepped up and gave us a real big lift with Randolph in foul trouble, and Warner has been doing that for us most of the year," McConnell said.